Tuesday, April 26, 2011

MUSINGS: The PSN Debacle

Going on a full week now, and there's nobody out there who doesn't know that the Playstation Network is down. Today, Sony have finally come clean about the hack and that user data may have very well been compromised. What gets me however isn't the fact I'm unable to play COLLODOOTY or whatever other piece of shit current-gen game with 4 hours of real content and shoddy tacked on multiplayer in the name of gameplay... I don't buy those games, it's called being an educated consumer. What does get to me is the fact that quite a while ago when the PS3's security was cracked and fail0verflow released all the nice details... a number of people pointed out, after digging a bit further, that credit card data is sent unencrypted over the PSN.

Now one would think that after news like this gets out, Sony would either take steps to secure their network further, or if indeed it was a fallacy, step up and debunk the rumor and thus assuage any user fears over the security of their data. Right?

Nope. Sony, being Sony, did the only thing that could be expected of them: Ignore it and instead, continue suing a 21 year old kid and trying to put the cat back in the bag. Because, after all, they are Sony! They are thus infallible and perfect. Daring to suggest otherwise will get you sued! Oh and... pick up that can!

I guess nobody at Sony ever heard of not throwing punches if you have a glass jaw.

When they finally discovered the security breach, three whole days after it actually happened, then they go and take the PSN down. Three days though... Too little too fucking late? HOURS is enough for compromised data to be put to use, but three days, geez. One would also like to think if they'd dropped the god complex and actually LISTENED to the people like GeoHot who were offering to actually help them FIX their security holes rather than sue them instead to try and put the cat back in the bag, that they wouldn't be in this situation.

But no, they are Sony, they are infallable and god! How dare you suggest otherwise?! Want to be sued?!... Pick up that can!


But, as we all are generally quite aware. Multi-billion dollar corporations like to believe they are too big and untouchable, and too invincible, and also are above the law and have the right to create their own rules and expect them to be legally enforceable in court. Anyone who owns a PS3 now knows about the whole Sony vs GeoHot debacle and how Sony pretty much had the courts in their pocket the entire time.

Which... of course, leads me to my current train of thought, however wrong it may well be. I'll just go off and state for the record that I am most likely going to be wrong in what I am about to say, hence the title of this entry as mere musings. If you are unable to accept this fact, then stop reading now.

My current train of thought is simple: First, Sony very obviously used their financial might to twist the courts so heavily in their favor, that the only reason GeoHot got off with a settlement is the fact they really, really have absolutely no case, and the fact that the cat really, really isn't going back in the bag no matter what they do to him. They had to have known that (I hope...).

But, in the process of buying out the courts, they made it very, very clear to anybody that trying to fight this battle LEGALLY, ie "the right way" wasn't going to work. It was about as fair as a Zimbabwean presidential election. So naturally, what happens when proper due process fails? The shit hits the fan and the fight turns dirty. Sony succeed in pissing off Anonymous, the hive mind of the internet. It's no open secret that even many LEGIT USERS of PS3/PSN were taken aback at how dirty Sony were playing.

So naturally, when the established legal process fails, and the little man finally realizes that the only way they are going to stand any form of chance is to play DIRTIER than the dirty corporation... Then you have a really, really nasty situation just waiting to blow up. First it began with the usual DDOS crap, which worked to knock PSN offline for all of... probably two hours at best. Of course, it didn't last nor did it matter a damn.

But, resistance is resistance, right? The anonymous many have taken a stand against Sony, the big evil corporate giant, etc. Here's the thing too that many are incapable of understanding: Anonymous is NOT a unified conglomerate, nor is it any semblance of an ORGANIZATION. It's literally mindboggling how the media nowadays refers to it as one would an actual NAMED ENTITY. It is anything BUT! You have sites like this appearing to be a 'front' for Anonymous, but this only serves to drive the misconception further down the wrong path.

Anonymous is NOT an organization, get that through your heads you moronic FauxFox News thinkalikes.

Now, anonymous has gone and publicly denied any involvement. Yeah, right, how do they even know that? The DDOS attempt has failed, and of course, not everyone would have been happy with the idealistic 'war with no casualties' that the initial group of faggots proposed. The reason the first attack was stopped was that they didn't want to inconvenience legit gamers.

Ok, that's very noble of you to think that... but you find me anywhere, a war fought without blood being spilt, I'll show you a Nintendo first party game. *trollface.jpg*. Like I said before, Anonymous is NOT a unified conglomerate, and while many will be bored enough to go along with any 'planned' attack, there are many who have their own agendas. I believe the current PSN attack was carried out by those who have their own agenda.

If I were to think about anyone who would have enough real hate for Sony... See, "hate" is a very strong word. Everyone casually tosses it out there all the time, but it doesn't come close to TRUE hate. If someone truly, from the bottom of their heart, hates a person, or an entity... hates enough to kill, hates enough to destroy... hates enough to sacrifice their own life for the destruction of said entity... It can be one hell of a driving force. The only thing I could think of is this guy. He's been /r/aided twice by Sony now, and twice have they taken his shit. If anyone were to have enough of a motive to hit back really, really hard, it would be him... Or people who support him.

Now of course, I'm not saying that he did it because, obviously, I don't know whether he did or he didn't, and once again these are just musings. But the timing of the overall attack on Sony was a little bit too convenient, and I doubt everyone was going to let Sony get away with their dirty tactics unscathed. Just because you're a huge multinational organization doesn't mean you're invincible. They're learning that reality the hard way now.

Either way, while I am also a PSN user, and someone who's details most likely have been compromised... I also believe the attack needed to happen. Yeah, I said it, hate mail stops at the door. Sony, up until now, have bullied people in the courts, perverted the normal course of justice with money, and their current EULA for the PSN is something that would make Hitler go "shit I wish I thought of that...". They were long, long overdue for a real serving of reality, that when you start throwing punches and you have a glass jaw, someone ultimately will punch back. Give anyone a reason to SERIOUSLY punch back and you have the current situation as it stands.

We still don't know when the PSN is coming back, Sony's stock price took a dive when they were finally forced to come clean about what was or wasn't compromised, and hey, for all we know, they have probably lost a lot of money on this. Of course, this isn't going to really change anything... We most likely aren't going to get OtherOS back as a result of this. All it really is is a huge black eye to the all-powerful oh-so-mighty evil corporation that believed it was invincible and god. A strike from mortals, as it were, as a sign that we do indeed exist, and that we won't take shit lying down. Of course I could be totally wrong about all this, and chances are I probably am totally off base. Whoever attacked Sony may well be a profiteer out for self-gain just exploiting a huge hole in their defenses, without a care in the world for anything else. That's a rather likely scenario too.

Who knows really, I don't, you don't... the only ones who do know are the ones who carried out the deed. You and I know they won't be talking anytime soon. Those with true power are the ones you never hear from, all you see are the results of their actions. It's those with big mouths like GeoHot that you hear from and never see anything worthwhile at all.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, let's be mad at Sony and not at the ones who hacked the system. I mean, it's their fault if they got hacked, hackers gonna hack, so it's not their fault. Fucking Sony, how dare they get hacked!

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  2. That's exactly it. Hackers gonna hack. Look at the 360, it's been hacked left and right and is ridiculously easy to pirate for. Do you see MS suing people left right and center in addition to buying out the courts and using the most underhanded tactics to bully an INDIVIDUAL just to try and make an example out of them?

    No, you do not. Hackers gonna hack, MS knows this, and they know the cat and mouse game will forever exist, and they are playing the game while still taking steps to protect their platform while not playing so dirty they are giving the hackers a REAL reason to hate.

    With the amount of fail Sony has on the backend, they should never have thrown a punch in the first place, yet they have. Now they suffer the consequences of throwing a punch when they have a glass jaw.

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  3. Very informative, keep posting such good articles, it really helps to know about things.

    ReplyDelete